Interview with former assistant to Todd Pletcher and Chad Brown as he takes on his mentors at Churchill Downs
Local boy made good is a familiar, heartwarming trope. How heartwarming, how life-enhancing the situation becomes depends on the level of ‘good’.
Carving out a steady living, good. Rising to prominence in a particular field, very good. Winning the biggest race in America in your own backyard with your first runner in the race? Good is no longer a suitable word.
Louisville native Whit Beckman – D. Whitworth Beckman, to give him his full racecard description – has just that opportunity on the first Saturday in May, but his progress towards becoming a Kentucky Derby trainer has been notable for its slow and steady burn, so much so that it was a surprise the flame caught at all.
Beckman’s backstretch barn houses Honor Marie, a midweight ‘Roses’ player who comes to the race off a strong-closing second place in the G2 Louisiana Derby at the Fair Grounds.
Honor Marie has looked a Kentucky Derby type ever since winning the G2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes at Churchill Downs last November; his trainer took much longer to grow into the role.
Soccer and skateboarding
“Horses were never really on my radar when I was younger,” he says, this despite his father being a veterinarian and his mother working with show horses. “I wanted to play soccer, I preferred to go skateboarding.
“Then I went to college and it just wasn’t working out for me, so I came back home without a real direction. I can’t pinpoint the moment it all changed, but I was helping my mom out with her horses and just became more and more absorbed in them.
“It was all about the actual animal in the stall, the level of communication, the level of trust, doing it all without words, picking things up just from a horse’s movement. A lot of jobs are just jobs, but this turned into a labour of love – I was always focused, absorbed 24/7.”
Beckman had felt his way to the light-switch and could now see where he should be going. It might sound a little Zen-like – a position underpinned by his repetition of the phrase “I’ve got the vision, I have to trust the process” – but however you get there, as long as you get there.
Brush with glory
And then it was all about the racetrack. He hotwalked for Louisville trainer Walter Binder, worked at a nearby stud farm, spent time with Godolphin at Keeneland, and that job led to his big break as assistant to Todd Pletcher, where he had his first brush with Kentucky Derby glory – albeit at a distance.
“I had spent every day around Super Saver, but I wasn’t at Churchill Downs on the big day [2010], I was at Saratoga looking after a lot of babies from various farms,” he explains.
“I watched on television, and even though I wasn’t there it was an amazing feeling just to be a part of something like that. Such a huge race, such a big deal, the whole journey with a horse from day one to the Derby.”
Beckman’s approach to his art is more instinctive than by-the-book, but his education followed a conventional arc via the apprenticeships he served with Pletcher, then Eoin Harty and finally Chad Brown, three names that would enhance any resumé. The plan was to have his own barn; the vision was there, the process realised it.
“At Todd’s, and everywhere else really, every day was a school day, and I never got complacent about that,” he says. “I never stopped paying attention, concentrated hard on working out what you shouldn’t do as a trainer. There are a variety of approaches towards training, and the number of horses you have dictates your methods.
“I was a bit hesitant about starting out on my own, but I didn’t want to get into too comfortable a rhythm, which can happen when you’re working in a great team.”
In true backstretch style, Beckman started out in September 2021 with just one horse. Now he has 30-odd, which he reckons a good number, wouldn’t mind another dozen, doesn’t want to spread himself too thin.
“I take pride in giving my horses time, bringing them through the right way,” he says. “With the numbers I have I can afford to be less aggressive with their preparation, take more time, look to the individual needs of each horse.
Trusting the process
“With big strings you have to have a system that works like clockwork, but the beauty of a smaller barn means I can make changes on the fly. I trust the process.”
Beckman, 42, makes a point of mentioning the maiden winner Drip – an unexciting name for an exciting horse – as one to watch closely later in the year, “He’s extremely talented, very fast, having some time off but he could be a Travers type of horse,” he says.
However, his attention right now is dialled right in on Honor Marie. “The intention was to run him earlier as a two-year-old, but as time went on it was clear that he wasn’t in the right place mentally, lacked any focus,” he says, and the similarities between the man and his horse come subtly to the fore.
“I gave him a lot of time, and could have waited longer to give him his debut [late September] but the race seemed the right one for him. Physically he was a bit behind the eight-ball too, but after that first start it all began to click for him.”
Honor Marie closed late to win that debut, hit the place in an allowance next time and then took the step up to a mile-sixteenth in his long stride, nailing the Kentucky Jockey Club to give Beckman his first graded-stakes win in just his second full year with a licence.
“Awesome,” he says, like the skateboarder he once was. That opinion survived Honor Marie’s fifth-place in a hot Risen Star at the Fair Grounds on his first start of 2024, was reinforced by the subsequent big-race success of three of the four horses ahead of him, and then justified by his near-miss in the Louisiana Derby, where he was second to fellow Kentucky contender Catching Freedom.
“There was no speed in the Risen Star and he was too far back on a bad surface, the jockey [Rafael Bejarano] didn’t adapt to how the race unfolded,” says Beckman.
“In the Louisiana Derby the plan was to follow the eventual winner but he ended up behind us early. After the race I was very proud of his progression – he was right where my expectations said he would be.
“There’s an extra sixteenth of a mile to run in the Derby itself and it’ll be better for him, bring out a new dimension in him. Stamina is his thing. He’ll be a way back and then come closing – I’m just praying for a fast pace and for him to find his rhythm behind it.
“His experience of Churchill Downs has to be a positive – there’s a long stretch here, and the Fair Grounds also has a long stretch. It could set up well for him.”
Plenty on his side
In a race in which so few will appreciate the ten-furlong test, Honor Marie surely has plenty on his side, and on his back he will have Irish jockey Ben Curtis, who clicked instantly with the colt in the Louisiana Derby.
Curtis has never ridden at Churchill Downs, but Beckman has prioritised familiarity with the horse over familiarity with the track.
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“He fits the horse, he’s a smart guy – it was a no-brainer to use Ben,” he says. “He has a lot of experience of gauging pace from his time in Britain, and is comfortable in big-field races.”
It is a big field and a hot field and there is nothing unexpected about the irony that the top two in the future book – Sierra Leone, trained by Chad Brown, and Fierceness, trained by Todd Pletcher – hail from barns very familiar to Beckman, just a pointed illustration of the high-class tutelage that has helped put him where he is today.
“To be included among those guys, two of the great trainers, people I really respect as horsemen, is a tremendous feeling and one that validates the work I’ve put in over the last 20 years,” he says.
Beckman shrugs off any thought of nerves, says there’s only futility in worrying, reckons he’ll find that Zen locus of peace and harmony in the saddling boxes, getting hands-on, doing something, keeping busy, trusting the process. He’s a laid-back cove, as you may have realised, tries not to get too high, tries not to get too low, but that doesn’t mean his pulse can’t quicken at the thought of Derby day.
“I look down the shedrow, see a lot of horses I like, and now I have to make it to the next level. I need to put my head down and keep working, and I know it only takes one horse.
“To win a Derby would be life-changing. I’m just hoping he has a good trip and then we’ll see how the cards fall. I’m just happy to be here, happy to have the experience.”
The vision and the process have brought him this far, now it’s all down to Honor Marie. And in case anyone is wondering, the ‘D’ in D. Whitworth Beckman stands for David; no-one will need reminding what happened when another David – also a hometown boy – got his chance against the Goliaths of this world.
• Visit the Kentucky Derby website and the Fair Grounds website
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